A Small Prayer
by BleachedMerc
Summary: When the weight of the world grows too cumbersome, Leon takes a moment to put everything in perspective.


It wasn't a good day for anyone in Radiant Gardens. Ever since the Snort family flipped the property, business tycoons like Scrooge fled like the Dickens for fear of an unstable economy. The mass exodus of blacksmiths and ice cream vendors led to a huge economic downturn that rippled all throughout the continent of Europe. When one economist was asked about the phenomenon, he explained that because most of the factories that supplied weapons and frozen dairy treats were located in Europe, the loss of their number one consumer spelled disaster for everyone.

Radiant Gardens was ultimately sold to a nameless conglomerate, which chose to bulldoze the castle town and turn it into a farm. After all, there was plenty of water to irrigate crops and flush away the manure from the cattle. One such manure-producing bovine was Horace.

Horace was out chewing on some cud one day when he accidentally escaped the stables. He went off on a magical adventure! And then wound up back at the stables to be branded. It hurt. A lot.

The next day, Horace wandered off again. This time, he made it farther than the backyard. Somehow getting aboard a star-liner cruise ship, Horace got a job as the potato peeler. But the flies that hovered around his tail kept getting into the entrees. That wouldn't have been such a problem if he hadn't also produced buckets of manure every few hours. Lacking the agricultural resources to properly deal with all the free fertilizer, Horace was then passed over to pool boy duty just because of the easy access to the water pumps necessary to wash away his waste. But that arrangement also fell through the cracks because passengers couldn't trust their children in the brown, stinky pool. So before too long, Horace was tossed in a dinghy and left to the mercy of the tide. It couldn't have happen a moment too soon, either, because all the extra weight aboard the ship made it dangerously close to sinking. But in retrospect, that wouldn't have mattered because they were eventually boarded by pirates and sunk anyway.

Anyway, Horace's dinghy drifted for a few days. So as not to starve, the brave bovine sailor regurgitated some snacks from his fourth stomach. Grass puree always tasted better the tenth day.

At some point, Horace washed ashore in a small village off the coast of Sri Lanka. Cows were sacred there, so Horace immediately became the village elder, god, and wiseman. People from miles away would bring their ailing family to the new deity for his mythical miracles. Horace kind of liked chewing cud on a golden throne, but he also didn't mind chewing cud in the dirt street or behind Sanji's Elephant Emporium. Honestly, he wasn't a particularly picky god.

One day when the line of worshippers was at its highest peak, Horace went out to the pastures and never returned. Some say he found tastier cud in Calcutta; other's believe the pirates came back for vengeance. It would be years before Horace would resurface again, and when he did, it would be his last hoorah. Some ducks were crossing the road near a very dangerous parking lot, and Horace warned them about an airplane that was coming in too hot. Because of him, the ducks escaped to safety. Horace died shortly after that due to a broken heart from a totally unrelated reason.

After hearing about his heroics, the Space Pope elevated Horace to sainthood...

* * *

"...and that's how this hospital got its name!"

Leon was in the St. Horace Memorial Hospital getting his broken ribs bandaged after saving some kids from a construction accident. All the while, the doctor kept yapping about something stupid. He couldn't really be sure what it was all about because he was too busy not caring.

"Whatever," replied Leon. He just prayed the moron wouldn't get too carried with his stupid story and tie the bandages too tight.

"Well, you're all set to go!" said the chatty doctor. He started blabbing about something else, but by that point, Leon had already hobbled out of the exam room with Aerith's help.

As the two made their way to the exit, they bumped into Roo, who offered them a pair of crutches that the idiot doctor forgot to give Leon. Aerith took the crutches, and after she and Roo spent a few minutes teaching Leon how to work the things, she repaid Roo with a Pooh stick. Roo wished them both the best and went on his way to return the Pooh stick to the Fellowship of the Pooh.

The end.


End file.
